Euthanasia debate flares up in Spain as election campaign kicks off

Hours after the election campaign officially kicked off in Spain, it is being shadowed by the arrest of a 69-year-old Spaniard on homicide charges after he helped his terminally ill wife end her life.

The divisive debate on euthanasia raised its profile as a campaign issue three weeks before a national election, with women’s rights and national identity also high on politicians’ agendas.

Angel Hernandez turned himself in to authorities after giving Maria Jose Carrasco, 61, a fatal dose of barbiturates.

He is now free awaiting trial and faces two to 10 years in jail if convicted. Carrasco had been suffering from multiple sclerosis, a degenerative disease, for more than 30 years.

A survey in 2017 showed 84 percent of Spaniards support euthanasia but both the conservative Popular Party (PP) and far-right Vox continue to oppose its decriminalization.

Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez told a pre-campaign rally on Sunday that, if he got parliamentary majority “euthanasia will be recognized as a right”.
That followed a bill his minority Socialist government submitted last year to make Spain Europe’s fourth country to decriminalize euthanasia and assisted suicide, which the PP and Ciudadanos blocked.

Ciudadanos leader Albert Rivera has now said he now supported euthanasia and a bill on “death with dignity” guaranteeing good palliative care. But PP leader Pablo Casado has ruled this out, and criticized the Socialists for trying to use the Hernandez case in campaigning.

Via Euronews